The Caged Lion eBook

When the death-hush was broken by the ‘Depart,
O Christian soul,’ and Bedford, with a face
white and set like a statue, stood up from his knees,
and crossed and kissed the still white brow, it was
to Malcolm as if the whole universe had become as
nothing. To him there remained only the great
God, the heavenly Jerusalem into which the King had
entered, and himself far off from the straight way,
wandering from his promise and his purpose into what
seemed to him a mere hollow painted scene, such as
came and went in the midst of a banquet. Or,
again, it was the grisly Dance of Death that was the
only reality; Death had clutched the mightiest in
the ring. Whom would he clutch next?

He stood motionless, as one in a dream, or rather
as if not knowing which was reality, and which phantom;
gazing, gazing on at the bed where the King lay, round
which the ecclesiastics were busying themselves, unperceiving
that James, Bedford, and the nobles had quitted the
apartment, till Percy first spoke to him in a whisper,
then almost shook him, and led him out of the room.
‘I am sent for you,’ he said, in a much
shaken voice; ‘your king says you can be of use.’
Then tightening his grasp with the force of intense
grief, ’Oh, what a day! what a day! My
father! my father! I never knew mine own father!
But he has been all to Harry and to me! Oh,
woe worth the day!’ And dropping into a window-seat,
he covered his face with his hands, and gave way to
his grief: pointing, however, to the council-room,
where Malcolm found Bedford writing at the table,
King James, and a few others, engaged in the same
manner.

A few words from James informed him (or would have
done so if he could have understood) that the Duke
of Bedford, on whom at that terrible moment the weight
of two kingdoms and of the war had descended, could
not pause to rest, or to grieve, till letters and
orders had been sent to the council in England, and
to every garrison, every ally in France, to guard
against any sudden panic, or faltering in friendship
to England and her infant heir. Warwick and
Salisbury were already riding post haste to take charge
of the army; Robsart was gone to the Queen, Exeter
to the Duke of Burgundy; and as the clergy were all
engaged with the tendance of the royal corpse, there
was scarcely any one to lessen the Duke’s toil.
James, knowing Malcolm’s pen to be ready, had
sent for him to assist in copying the brief scrolls,
addressed to each captain of a fortress or town, announcing
the father’s death, and commanding him to do
his duty to the son—­King Harry VI.
Each was then to be signed by the Duke, and despatched
by men-at-arms, who waited for the purpose.

Like men stunned, the half-dozen who sat at the council-table
worked on, never daring to glance at the empty chair
at the upper end. The only words that passed
were occasional inquiries of, and orders from, Bedford;
and these he spoke with a strange alertness and metallic
ring in his voice, as though the words were uttered
by mechanism; yet in themselves they were as clear
and judicious as possible, as if coming from a mind
wound up exclusively to the one necessary object; and
the face—­though flushed at first, and gradually
growing paler, with knitted brows and compressed lips—­betrayed
no sign of emotion.